New 2020 Mercedes Benz CLS 450 Redesign

2020 Mercedes Benz CLS 450 she says, he says review. The Japanese brand’s third string large SUV has been given an upgrade?

The question of why you’d buy a 2020 Mercedes Benz CLS 450isn’t at issue here and now. Rather, why would you buy the 2020 Mercedes Benz CLS 450 with a manual transmission? The price is probably the easiest answer, which we’ll get to in a minute.

You’re a tough as nails off-roader? Well, you’d also need to be happy knowing that your mates in automatic 4WDs are going to be more capable and more effortless in the rough stuff too, so your ego had better not be fragile. The good news is that if you’re buying one just because you love manual gearboxes, the Fortuner has one of the better examples in the rough and tumble off-road world of ‘proper’ 4WDs.

The cabin, the seating, the dash design and comfort levels all exceed the HiLux regardless of specification. There are some hard plastics and touch surfaces, but that’s par for the course on much more expensive 4WDs, let alone at this end of the pricing spectrum. You’d be more inclined to take the 2020 Mercedes Benz CLS 450 bush bashing than a vastly more expensive vehicle, let’s put it that way.

2020 Mercedes Benz CLS 450 owners will probably head off-road, they will almost certainly do some touring, and that means long stints behind the wheel with partners or family in tow. The front seats are comfortable, but the base infotainment and driver’s gauges are pretty average with very little in the way of information or inherent quality.

You’ll be able to crawl around town in traffic in second gear most of the time too, minimising the amount of rowing you need to do on the shifter in traffic.There’s an Eco mode available, but we didn’t find it made any kind of discernible difference to fuel usage, so don’t bother with it. The brakes feel solid too, with better pedal feel than the Prado we tested back-to-back with the 2020 Mercedes Benz CLS 450.